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DEMOCRATIC ORGANIZATION OF 
THE COMING PEACE 
CONFERENCE 


BY 


EDWARD A. FILENE 


Pviblication No. 1142 

Reprinted from America’s Relation to the World Conflict 
Vol. LXXII of The Annals of the 
American Academy of Political and Social Science 
Philadelphia, July, 1917 



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Reprinted from The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social 
Science, Philadelphia, July, 1917. 

Pubhcation No. 1142. 


DEMOCRATIC ORGANIZATION OF THE COMING PEACE 
CONFERENCE 

By Edward A. Filene. 

A business man need not apoligize for concerning himself, in 
these unusual times, with the problems of international politics. 
They are today giving close consideration to international affairs 
not always so much from intellectual choice as from practical 
necessity. For the fact is that in the years succeeding this war 
business success, social advance and political progress will depend 
more on the kind of settlement that is made of this war than on the 
individual plans and initiative men and women bring to any partic- 
ular piece of work. 

If this war ends in the usual kind of settlement, no amount of 
private initiative can free business from the handicap of rival 
armaments and their crushing tax burdens, and the trade wars 
that are as certain to follow a patched up peace as night is to follow 
day. Therefore upon the ground of self-interest, if no higher reason 
existed, diplomacy becomes as legitimate a concern of business ad- 
ministration as are the costs of production. 

The stability and free development of the world’s economic 
life demand a new kind of settlement of the war. There must be 
set up such joint guarantees of justice and peace that the nations 
will not be driven into an unprecedented rivalry in armaments 
which coupled with the enormous cost of reconstruction would give 
rise to taxation so heavy that, if indeed revolutions did not follow, 
trade wars would be inspired so destructive as to complicate the 
business life of the whole world. 

One of the things that this war has demonstrated is that 
foreign affairs are personal affairs for all of us, although in our easy- 
going moments we have acted as though foreign affairs do not con- 
cern the average man and are the exclusive property of diplomats 
operating behind the closed doors of secret council chambers. This 
war has proved that the blunder of an hour in a foreign office may 
undermine the results of a century of constructive domestic effort. 

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The Annals of the American Academy 


All this means that when the time comes to write the treaty that will 
end this war there must be recognized with new emphasis the vital 
connection between diplomacy and the domestic development of 
nations. 

In a recent number of the Echo de Paris, Fernand Engerand, 
Deputy for Calvados, said: “The peace which will conclude this 
unparalleled war will be the greatest event in history, and the 
treaty which will ratify it must be a masterpiece.” Speaking of 
the weakened condition in which Europe will come to the end of 
the war and of the desirability of assuring a long peace in which to 
recuperate he goes on to say: “A long, a very long peace is therefore 
necessary and this must be the main object of the treaty. The 
problem to be solved is, in fact, nothing less than to rebuild Europe, 
for to have a good peace it is necessary to have a good Europe.” 
And now that we are in the war, we may say “to have a good peace 
it is necessary to have a good world.” 

The conditions and problems which we will face after the war 
will depend in no small measure upon the type of peace that is 
made. If at the peace conference, a peace is made that will in 
reality be nothing but a latent war, then the nations now at war will 
be compelled to add, to the enormous fixed charges of war debts 
and the expenses of reconstruction, the continuing burden of 
another rivalry in armaments unprecedented in cost. In the same 
degree that this armed conflict has been unprecedented so will the 
armed peace that follows it be unprecedented in the extent of 
defensive preparation if the traditional peace is made. This trio 
of burdens — war debts, the expenses of reconstruction and the 
cost of another rivalry in armaments — will constitute a compelling 
pressure upon each European nation to undersell every other 
nation in the neutral markets, and will inspire one of the longest 
and most destructive trade wars of history. So we may reverse 
the statement of the French deputy “that to have a good peace 
it is necessary to have a good world” and say with equal truth “to 
have a good world it is necessary to have a good peace” — a sane 
settlement of the war. 

The two outstanding weaknesses of the peace conferences of 
the past have been: 

1. They have been dominated by diplomats who have represented a more or 
less fictitious entity — the state — rather than the masses of every-day people who 


Democratic Organization of Peace Conference 


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in workshop, store, office, field and home constitute the nation. National prestige 
has overshadowed the common welfare of men. 

2. They have seldom brought creative statesmanship to bear upon the prob- 
lem of future security. Each peace of the past has carried with it the germs of 
future wars. 

The elimination of these two elements of weakness from the 
peace conference at the end of this war is fundamental to every 
social, industrial, political and ethical program of the future. And 
I am convinced that the elimination of these two weaknesses, while 
depending much upon a changed mind, finally will depend upon 
the way the peace conference is organized. 

The membership of the coming peace conference must repre- 
sent a new and more wholesome diplomacy, marked by the follow- 
ing characteristics: 

1. It must be more modem. It must realize that its primary function is 
not to minister to an exaggerated sense of national prestige that smacks too much 
of the artificial honor of the old duelling days, but it is rather a job of social 
engineering — so adjusting the relations of peoples that the energies of the world will 
flow into constructive rather than destructive channels. The men who frame the 
treaty at the end of this war should in reality be a group of men drawn from the 
basic work divisions of men in all nations whose experience would make them wise 
counsellors in the working out of a really scientific management of the world of 
nations. 

2. It must be more public. The traditional veil of secrecy that diplomacy 
has thrown over international affairs must be lifted to the greatest practical extent. 
The time ought to be past when five or six men could rush half a world into war 
over night without consulting in some way the men and women who must bear 
the burdens of war. 

3. It must be more responsible. It is even more important that diplomacy 
be made responsible than that it be made public. It is, of course, neither practi- 
cal nor desirable always to spread the record of the foreign office on the front 
page of the morning paper. But there must be devised means by which the 
masses can have an increasing control over the game in which they themselves 
represent the stakes. Heretofore even the democracies have given a blank check 
to diplomacy, signed with their lives and their resources, and diplomacy has been 
privileged to fill in the amount. But hereafter democracy must audit the accounts 
of diplomacy. 

This plea for a greater democratization of diplomacy is fre- 
quently met with the statement that the man on the street is not 
interested in foreign affairs. That may have been so. But he is 
interested in his life, his family and his property, and this war has 
taught him how largely these are dependent upon diplomacy. 


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The Annals of the American Academy 


The value and security of his job after the war depends in a very 
real sense on the way the war is settled. In our increasingly inter- 
dependent world he must become interested in this matter. He has 
never had a chance to be vitally interested, and as is true in every 
democratic experiment he will never learn but by the carrying of 
responsibility. But the average man probably has a deeper in- 
terest in international matters than we guess. This war has forced 
men whose thinking has never before gone beyond the bounds of a 
parish to think in world terms. 

I am convinced that the end of this war will offer the oppor- 
tunity for a decided step forward in the democratizing of diplomacy 
and in the reduction of the hazards of war for the future. 

All belligerents unite in saying that “security for the future” 
must be the guiding consideration of the peace treaty. It is clear, 
that a constructive peace that will safeguard the future is not 
probable unless the principles of the new diplomacy that I have 
outlined are in control of the peace conference. 

A more democratic organization of the peace conference,^ majiing 
it more representative of the fundamental interests of society, is 
the one move that, in my judgment, most nearly insures' the secur- 
ing of the kind of peace the future interests of society demahd. 

It will not be possible overnight to reconstruct diplomatic 
procedure; but the coming peace conference will be different from 
all that have preceded it and in that difference lies the hope of 
better things. The conference will come at the end of a war that, 
as I have pointed out, will have dramatized as never before three 
things: 

1. The necessity for guarantees against future wars. 

2. The fact that the world has become so interdependent that all nations are 
involved in the wars of any nations, even though not as combatants. 

3. The fact that modern war throws burdens upon all classes and all men 
whether soldiers or not; that the farmer, the merchant and the mechanic must 
sacrifice at home as the soldier sacrifices on the firing Une. 

With these facts so clearly proved, it seems to me that our 
government will have the opportunity, in the peace conference, of 
striking a new note in diplomacy. It will be pertinent to suggest 
that since the problem of security of the future underlies the for- 
tunes of all classes and is so intimately involved with the future 
industrial and social development of the world, there should be 


Democratic Organization of Peace Conference 


5 


included in the membership of the conference responsible represen- 
tatives of the fundamental interests of society, such as business, 
labor, agriculture, etc. Such a suggestion coming from the United 
States would doubtless bear great weight. The United States 
might well take the leadership in the making of diplomacy more 
representative and responsible not only by suggesting such a policy 
to other nations, but by setting as an example the men it selects to 
represent it in the peace conference. 

If there should prove to he insurmountable obstacles to so complete 
a break with diplomatic traditions as the appointment of direct repre- 
sentatives of business^ labor and agriculture would then might it 
not be feasible to attach to each diplomatic representative a counselor 
from each of the fundamental work divisions of society f 

It is the duty of every business man, of every professional man, 
of every thinker and worker, as the most important part of his plan- 
ning for the future, to study the forces that will shape the end-of-the- 
war-treaties, and to ally himself with his fellow citizens in an at- 
tempt to shape the treaties for the good of our own nation and the 
world. Because, as I said in the beginning — In the years succeeding 
this war business success, social advance and political progress will 
depend more on the kind of settlement that is made of this war than on 
the individual plans and initiative men and women bring to any 
particular piece of work. 


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